We aimed to clarify if the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) predicted change in suicidal ideation in the general population. This study used a prospective cohort design (4-week survey interval) (N = ...3,295). The online survey covered the BHS, suicidal ideation, depression/anxiety tendencies, and demographic details. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed hopelessness was a significant predictor of change in suicidal ideation from T1 to T2 (B = 0.07, 95% confidence interval: 0.05-0.09). Although high hopelessness was related to a short-term rise in suicidal ideation, the risk for suicide cannot be judged adequately by hopelessness from a clinical perspective.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VSZLJ
One factor that has been studied as a protective factor for suicide is character strength and there are many studies that examined the relationship between gratitude and suicide. The problem of ...character strength research on suicide prevention is that the link between various character strengths and suicide has not been comprehensively examined. We explored which character strength is associated with suicidal ideation. The study is a cross-sectional, self-administered questionnaire survey. Participants were 2,000 Internet users in Japan aged 20 years or older. The online survey covered suicidal ideation, character strengths and demographic details. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis was performed with the suicidal ideation as the dependent variable and character strengths as the independent variable. A significant regression equation was found (F (22, 1977) = 64.65, P < 0.001), with an R
2
of 0.42. 'Engagement' (B = −0.38, P < 0.001), 'Love' (B = −0.33, P = 0.001), and 'Risk-taking' (B = 0.40, P < 0.001) were significant predictors of suicidal ideation. The positive trait of being able to actively engage with people and build a loving relationship could be a protective factor for suicide.
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DOBA, FSPLJ, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VSZLJ
Monitoring the psychological conditions of social media users during rapidly developing public health crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, using their posts on social media has rapidly gained ...popularity as a relatively easy and cost-effective method. However, the characteristics of individuals who created these posts are largely unknown, making it difficult to identify groups of individuals most affected by such crises. In addition, large annotated data sets for mental health conditions are not easily available, and thus, supervised machine learning algorithms can be infeasible or too costly.
This study proposes a machine learning framework for the real-time surveillance of mental health conditions that does not require extensive training data. Using survey-linked tweets, we tracked the level of emotional distress during the COVID-19 pandemic by the attributes and psychological conditions of social media users in Japan.
We conducted online surveys of adults residing in Japan in May 2022 and collected their basic demographic information, socioeconomic status, and mental health conditions, along with their Twitter handles (N=2432). We computed emotional distress scores for all the tweets posted by the study participants between January 1, 2019, and May 30, 2022 (N=2,493,682) using a semisupervised algorithm called latent semantic scaling (LSS), with higher values indicating higher levels of emotional distress. After excluding users by age and other criteria, we examined 495,021 (19.85%) tweets generated by 560 (23.03%) individuals (age 18-49 years) in 2019 and 2020. We estimated fixed-effect regression models to examine their emotional distress levels in 2020 relative to the corresponding weeks in 2019 by the mental health conditions and characteristics of social media users.
The estimated level of emotional distress of our study participants increased in the week when school closure started (March 2020), and it peaked at the beginning of the state of emergency (estimated coefficient=0.219, 95% CI 0.162-0.276) in early April 2020. Their level of emotional distress was unrelated to the number of COVID-19 cases. We found that the government-induced restrictions disproportionately affected the psychological conditions of vulnerable individuals, including those with low income, precarious employment, depressive symptoms, and suicidal ideation.
This study establishes a framework to implement near-real-time monitoring of the emotional distress level of social media users, highlighting a great potential to continuously monitor their well-being using survey-linked social media posts as a complement to administrative and large-scale survey data. Given its flexibility and adaptability, the proposed framework is easily extendable for other purposes, such as detecting suicidality among social media users, and can be used on streaming data for continuous measurement of the conditions and sentiment of any group of interest.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Cross‐correlation was examined for the volume of suicide‐related Internet searches and suicide death rate. Analysis of Google data and figures released by the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare ...indicated that the volume of searches using the search terms jisatsu (suicide) and jisatsu houhou (suicide method) are not correlated with the suicide death rate. In addition, a rising suicide death rate might be related to the increase in suicide‐related search activity (particularly utsudepression), but an increase in suicide‐related search activity itself is not directly linked to the rise of suicide death rate.
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DOBA, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The present study aimed to establish willingness to pay for suicide prevention among taxpayers in Japan. We conducted an internet-based questionnaire survey using a double-bounded dichotomous choice ...contingent valuation, and analyzed data for 956 participants. The median willingness to pay to reduce the mortality risk from suicide by 25% was JPY 1,572 ($13.67 USD). Being married was significantly associated with willingness to pay. The willingness to pay to reduce the mortality risk from suicide may be lower than that to reduce other mortality risks such as traffic accidents.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VSZLJ
We investigated the association between suicidal ideation and COVID-19 preventive behaviors using a prospective observational longitudinal design (N = 6683). The baseline survey was 24 January 2020 ...(before COVID-19 pandemic, T1) and the follow-up survey was between April 27 and 30, 2020 (during COVID-19 pandemic, T2). The sample was the general adult population in Japan. Adjusted for demographic and socioeconomic factors, high suicidal ideation at T1 was associated with significantly low levels of engagement in COVID-19 preventive behaviors at T2. Individuals with strong suicidal ideation before the pandemic were less likely to engage in COVID-19 preventive behaviors.
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DOBA, FSPLJ, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VSZLJ
Abstract Background Infodemiology studies for suicide prevention have become increasingly common in recent years. However, the association between Twitter use and suicide has only been partially ...clarified. This study examined the association between suicide-related tweets and suicidal behaviour to identify suicidal young people on the Internet. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted using Internet survey panels ( n =220,848) comprising users in their 20s, through a major Japanese Internet survey company. Final analyses included the data of 1000 participants. Results Of the participants ( n =1000) used in the final analysis, 61.3% were women and the mean age was 24.9 years ( SD =2.9, range=20–29). Logistic regression analyses showed that tweeting “want to die” and “want to commit suicide” was significantly related to suicidal ideation and behaviour. Lifetime suicide attempts, the most powerful predictor of future suicide out of all suicidal behaviours, were more strongly associated with tweeting “want to commit suicide” than tweeting “want to die”. Having a Twitter account and tweeting daily were not associated with suicidal behaviour. Limitations An online panel survey has some inherent biases, such as coverage bias. Respondents were already registered as members of a particular Internet survey company in Japan, which limits the possibility of generalization. Conclusions Twitter logs may be used to identify suicidal young Internet users. This study provides a basis for the early identification of individuals at high risk for suicide.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPUK
This study aimed to clarify the association between the experience of searching for deliberate self‐harm (DSH)‐related Internet content and the mental states and lifetime suicidal behaviors of ...Japanese young adults (n = 1000) using an online questionnaire. The results were assessed using χ2 and t‐tests, which revealed that the experience of DSH‐related Internet searches may be significantly associated with lifetime suicidal behaviors (including DSH), suicidal ideation, and tendencies towards depression/anxiety. We discussed the possibility of using search engines to increase the motivation of Japanese young adults who deliberately harmed themselves with regard to seeking help.
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DOBA, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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